Sabrina Nangala Robertson

DOB: 29/09/76
LANGUAGE GROUP: Warlpiri
COMMUNITY: Yuendumu, NT

Sabrina Nangala Robertson was born in Alice Springs Hospital, the closest hospital to Yuendumu, a remote Aboriginal community 290 northwest of Alice Springs in the Northern Territory of Australia. She is the daughter of the acclaimed Aboriginal artist Dorothy Napangadi. Sabrina grew up in Yuendumu and went to the local school. She now alternates between living in Yuendumu and Alice Springs. She has been painting with Warlukurlangu Artists Aboriginal Corporation, an Aboriginal owned and governed art centre in Yuendumu, since 2005. She paints her father’s Jukurrpa or Dreaming stories passed down to her by her father and her father’s father before her for millennia. These stories relate to her traditional land, Pirlinyarnu (Mt Farewell), its features, and its plants and animals.

The site of Pirlinyarnu (Mt Farewell) is located about 165km west of Yuendumu in the Northern Territory. Two Jangala men, rainmakers, sang the rain, unleashing a giant storm colliding with another Wapurtali storm. The two storms travelled across the country from Kalimpinpa near Kintore. A Kirralanji (brown falcon) carried the storm further west until it dropped at Pirlinyarnu, forming an enormous Maliri (lake). A mulju (water soakage depicted in this artwork) exists today. At Puyurru, the bird dug up a ‘warnayarra’ (rainbow serpent). The serpent carried water with it to create another large lake. Hundreds of ‘ngapangarlpa’ (bush ducks) still flock to Pirlinyarnu whenever it rains today. The ‘kirda’ (custodians) for this Jukurrpa (dreaming) are the Jangala/Jampijinpa men and Nangala/Nampijinpa women.